Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
It is a story of generations, of almost every generation since the end of World War Two and the days when everything finally changed and the young and the restless were no longer content with living in the perpetual shadow of expectancy and out-dated ways of thinking. The loosening of the straight jacket, a couple of buttons untied in the right places and the truth of self expression finally being seen as one mode of musical fashion replaced another; all led down a path in which Wild Nights and Break Up Fights have become the norm in every town and city throughout the country.
This form of self-expression, the near rowdy but so natural human response to castigation and over burdening political hypocrisy has to be released somewhere and whether you are part of the culture or not, it cannot be denied that what the government sows, so shall they reap and it takes courage and great perception to capture even the barest glimpse of that in a set of songs in the way that The Blue Waves have done.
Wild Nights and Break Up Fights, the antidote to the pressure that is imposed on life and the steam valve that requires careful opening and in which many need to keep a grip on sanity, it is no wonder that Friday and Saturday nights might end up the way they do and the circular, spiralling feeling that is all too evident is not only framed by The Blue Waves but relished within. If Dylan Thomas can capture the lives of the townsfolk of Llareggub then why is it not only right that a band such as The Blue Waves can take a snapshot at the lives and pitfalls of human existence as they look upon their own seaside town.
The five tracks, Thunderball, Legit Problems, Running For Buses, Wild Nights and Break Up Fights and Raised Right Lip all force themselves upon the listener with strength, willpower and a certain amount of industrial charm play with images that are fresh, intoxicating and brutal and worthy of any poetic structure to which the great Welsh bard might have considered placing into a 21st Century Llareggub in which the symbolism of modern life had infected even the smallest sleeping village.
A composed debut, one that raises an unflappable smile of friendly involvement in a world that has become rougher round the edges, distant in attitudes but so much more exciting than the staid dull existence offered by pre Second World War post Victorian selfish posturing.
The Blue Waves will be at Zanzibar in Liverpool on September 9th.
Ian D. Hall